Pickup On South Street Quotes

The car slid along Los Angeles to Fifth, east to San Pedro, south again for block after block, quiet blocks and loud blocks, blocks where silent men sat on shaky front porches and blocks where noisy young toughs of both colors snarled and wise-cracked at one another in front of cheap restaurants and drug-stores and beer parlors full of slot machines. (Pickup on Noon Street)

A lot of unemployment, though. We’ve got two closed factories and a rotting shopping mall that went bankrupt before it ever opened. We’re not far from Kentucky, which marks the unofficial border to the South, so one sees more than enough pickup trucks decorated with stickers of Confederate flags and slogans proclaiming their brand of truck is superior to all others. Lots of country music stations, lots of jokes that contain the word “nigger.” A sewer system that occasionally backs up into the streets for some unknown reason. Lots and lots of stray dogs around, many with grotesque deformities.